Miss America confronted family pain with pageant

LAS VEGAS (AP) The nation's newest

Miss America

is a 23-year-old Wisconsin brunette who had prolonged conversations with her family mulling either or not to make her father's jail time for mail rascal a heart of her debate in a beauty pageant.

While her competitors pushed platforms including compelling a health advantages of divert and safeguarding a environment,

Laura Kaeppeler

(KEP'-ler) pronounced she wants children of jailed adults to feel reduction alone, to have mentoring and as most of a attribute with their relatives as possible.

"There are many of we out there and we was one of them yet it doesn't have to conclude you,"

Kaeppeler

told The Associated Press after winning a climax and $50,000 grant on Saturday night.

To win, she pr onounced beauty queens and politicians should remember they paint all Americans, sang an show strain and strutted in a white bikini and black dusk gown.

Her looks, smarts and personal goal tender a row of 7 luminary judges adequate to give her a subsequent year with a title.

"What happened with my father is not what my year is going to be focused on," she said. "It's going to be focused on looking brazen and relocating to a destiny since that's what my family has finished and that's what I'll enthuse others to do, as well."

Kaeppeler estimated that there are some-more than 2 million children with a primogenitor in jail.

Kaeppeler's father,

Jeff Kaeppeler

, told a AP he served 18 months in sovereign jail for mail fraud, a judgment his daughter pronounced started as she was graduating high propagandize and entering college.

Jeff Kaeppeler pronounced when his daughter approached a family about creation a personal subject her selected platform, they upheld it even yet they knew it would be discussed publicly.

"It taught us that God can spin anything into good if we let him," he said. "Laura is totally on house with that idea. She let that expostulate her and enthuse her this past year to get prepared for this.

"We've seen a miracle," he pronounced while watchful backstage for a news discussion in that his daughter called him her "best friend" and quickly took cinema with him onstage.

"I adore you," he whispered to her as dozens of cameras snapped photos.

Miss Oklahoma Betty Thompson came in second, while Miss New York Kaitlyn Monte placed third.

Kaeppler introduced herself to manifestation viewers by referencing her home state's Green Bay Packers, a NFL's fortifying Super Bowl champions.

"If you're watching, Aaron Rodgers, call me," she said, referring to a football team's luminary quarterback.

She was good adequate during rough com petitions to be selected as one of 15 semifinalists who altered on to contest in a pageant's finale. Her bid lasted by swimsuit, dusk wear, talent and talk competitions that saw cuts after any round.

She was asked mins before being crowned either Miss America should announce her politics.

"Miss America represents everyone, so we consider a summary to domestic possibilities is that they paint everybody as well," she said. "And so in these mercantile times, we need to be looking brazen to what America needs, and we consider Miss America needs to paint all."

The manifestation aired live to easterly seashore viewers on ABC and fasten behind to a rest of a country. The eventuality was a perfection of a week of rough competitions and months of preparations for a titleholders from all 50 states and a District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and a U.S. Virgin Islands.

Kaeppeler, of Kenosha, Wis., some 40 miles south of Milwaukee, pronounced her crowning impulse was a blur.

"I was great even before my name was called," Kaeppeler said. "It was only surreal to have this honor."

She replaces Teresa Scanlan of Nebraska, who won final year during age 17 and skeleton to use her grant to compensate for law school.

As a new Miss America, Kaeppeler will spend a subsequent year furloughed a nation to pronounce to opposite groups and lifting income for a Children's Miracle Network, a Miss America Organization's central charity.

She majored in song and outspoken opening during a private Lutheran magnanimous humanities college in Kenosha, and told manifestation officials primarily that she designed to obtain a master's grade in debate and denunciation pathology and turn a debate therapist.

But that altered once she became Miss Wisconsin.

She now says she intends to use a grant income to pursue a law grade and turn a family profession who specializes in assisting children of jailed adults.

"I unequivocally fe el like I've been called to work in this," she said. "Whether we became Miss America or not, this is something that we would pursue in my career no matter what."

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Oskar Garcia can be reached during http://twitter.com/oskargarcia

(news.yahoo.com)